Drinkaware

Working closely with the Drinkaware digital team across their digital presence

We have delivered a number of projects with the digital team at Drinkaware, including a digital innovation strategy, visual design, business planning, content strategy and user research and consultancy on their drink tracker app.

One of our most recent projects, was to deliver the user experience and wireframes to improve their drinking self-assessment questionnaire.

The problem:

Drinkaware wanted to improve their popular online self-assessment tool, which has been completed 250k times in the last year and drives significant traffic to the site’s advice content.

The original tool comprised three questions intended to serve as a ‘screener’ to identify alcohol misuse. Drinkaware wanted to extend the questionnaire to deliver a more in depth, ten-question alcohol assessment, structured around the well-evidenced AUDIT questionnaire (as used by the World Health Organization). Rather than simply provide the four possible outcomes the AUDIT recommends, Drinkaware wanted to provide users with a more detailed assessment of their alcohol consumption and personalised feedback based on their answers to each question.

This required a thorough analysis of the available academic literature on drinking behaviours and the AUDIT intervention, which in turn informed the development of a complex piece of information architecture. All of this had to be presented in such a way that it could be validated by Drinkaware’s Medical Advisory Panel, whilst also serving as a functional specification for the development team.

The solution

We:

Researched the ways that various organisations administer the AUDIT questionnaire

Analysed academic papers concerning the questionnaire’s efficacy for various groups of people

Broke down the complex scoring and branching of the questionnaire into a simple spreadsheet, using logic statements aimed at the development team as well as natural language descriptions for non-technical stakeholders

Sourced and edited appropriate copy to appear on the results page

Created wireframes for each page of the tool

Provided a working prototype that allowed stakeholders to visualise and test the final product

What Drinkaware Say:

“One of Drinkaware’s core values is that we are evidence led in all that we do. Therefore when it came to scoping and developing a tool on our website that would be able to accurately assess an individual’s drinking behaviour and provide informative feedback, we needed evidence based recommendations built on rock solid research. MC2 were more than up to the challenge. Their recommendations were passed with minimal comment from our Medical Advisory panel, they translated this work into a complex IA, engaging end user copy, developer friendly briefing notes and to top it all they went above and beyond to create a functioning prototype of the tool.

“We have worked with them on number of projects and can safely say, the approach taken here was not a one off. Having lived and breathed the non-profit sector for a number of years, they understand the need to create work geared up to deliver demonstrable outcomes. They pride themselves on professionalism, process, creativity, value for supporter’s money and delivering work of the highest calibre.”

What our clients say

Alison bought a huge breadth of strategic voluntary sector digital experience. She provided a framework and rigour to ensure we challenged ourselves to deliver a programme that was truly transformational rather than just a step change. She saw connections where we saw discrete projects defined by internal structures.

Brendan Paddy, Director of Communications, DEC

Alison brought a huge breadth of strategic voluntary sector digital experience. She provided a framework and rigour to ensure we challenged ourselves to deliver a programme that was truly transformational rather than just a step change.

Brendan Paddy, Director of Communications, DEC

We Are MC2 is a dream consultancy for third sector clients. My experience has been great.

I wanted to work collaboratively with a strategist who has the right mix of experience, who has the ability to apply creative thinking to complex challenges and the know how to drive this thinking through to action. My experience of working with Alison and We Are MC2 is that they tick all these boxes and then some.